In this technique you’ll keep your left hand on the shift and steer only with the right. First hold the wheel as usual (at 9 and 3 o’clock with both hands), then take you’re shifting hand off: now you are holding the wheel only with your steering hand.
It is unclear that who invented one hand steering. But Group B legend & Flying Finn, Timo Salonen has settled into this particular sort of technique and used this often. He drove his 205 T16 like this often. While undoubtedly an unorthodox driving style, rally drivers like Colin McRae, Richard Burns and pro drivers like Juichi Wakisaka have utilised one handed steering.
The advantage of this technique is improved tire management. One hand steering is easy going on tires. But to get the maximum advantage of it the car must be lightweight.
To the naked eye one hand steering is some off-the-wall technique, but it’s based on solid principles. What it boils down to is, how do you turn along a slight steering angle? The driver should practise a lot pursuing that question. It’s very difficult to clear corners where there’s not enough steering angle to turn. Actually most corners on a mountain pass is like that. And you’ll feel uneasy with just one hand. You won’t be able to respond fast enough if something happens. So you should train for a long time to being able to drive like this.
One hand steering only works when you’re absolutely confident in your driving while anticipating the future with 100% accuracy, even when pushing yourself to the limit. Without having 100% confidence in controlling everything you can’t drive like this.
Video Credit: Antti Kalhola
Thank you.